Brand New Year, Brand New Social Strategy: How to Start Over as a Small Business on Social [INFOGRAPHIC]

As a small business, how do you put together an effective social strategy? This infographic by Mark Smiciklas uses an 8 step process from Jay Baer.

Step 1: Build an Ark

You don’t want to just have one staff member in charge of your social strategy. Instead, you want to have your whole business have some input in it. Indeed, likely everyone an also benefit from seeing how your customers are responding to you, which is something that social listening can provide. Put together a cross fuctional team to develop strategy, implement tactics and manage social.

Step 2: Listen and Compare

Before you start creating content, see where and how people are already talking about your brand or your industry. Your community is already out there, you just need to reach them. Some listening software might be of help.

Step 3: What’s the Point?

Any strategy needs its chief motivation. What does your company want to get out of social? Brand awareness? Sales? Loyalty and retention? You likely want all these things, but pick one and design your social around it. Then as your social efforts evolve, re-assess.

Step 4: Select Success Metrics

How do you know that your strategy is working? If you’ve done step 3, you know what goal you are trying to reach. Now what do you need to measure to see if you are getting there? What are you social KPIs? Think beyond just likes and follows and clicks. What shows that you are getting what you need out of social?

Step 5: Analyze Your Audiences

Who are the consumers that you are reaching on social? You likely have a few different audiences. There are people who have been using your product or service for a long time already. There are also people who need your product or service, but don’t even know it is out there. What are the characteristics of these different audiences? Where are they on social? What do they need or want? And what kind of messaging should you create especially to meet those needs or wants?

Step 6: What’s Your One Thing?

Your product or service is a lot of things. And there are ways of appealing to people’s brains with information about all those things. But what is your core value? What is the thing that people can understand with their hearts instead of their brains? “Disney isn’t about movies, it’s about magic,” according to the infographic. “Apple isn’t about technology, it’s about innovation.” What is your one thing?

Step 7: How Will You Be Human?

Social networks are a place where people connect with other people. Not where corporate entities connect with people. How can you show your humanity in your social communication?

Step 8: Create a Channel Plan

Each social platform is different. Some are a great place for images. Others are better for long form story telling. Once you know what you want to communicate and what relationships you want to build, make a channel by channel plan. What will you be doing with Facebook? What will you be doing with Instagram? Think of each social networks strengths and weakness and capitalize on them.